


This Is The Best Thing Ever

by laseri



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ASMR, Episode: s11e06 Demons of the Punjab, F/F, Female Friendship, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hair Braiding, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 13:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16620131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laseri/pseuds/laseri
Summary: The Doctor is rediscovering what it's like to be part of a sisterhood. Inspired by the henna scene in Demons of the Punjab.





	This Is The Best Thing Ever

The Doctor sits cross-legged on the floor in the Punjab by firelight. Yaz's great-grandmother gently holds her wrist. She feels the softness of a henna brush on her open palm and a corresponding pleasant tickly sensation between her shoulder blades. She's been a woman before, but she was alone. She's been a sister, but not like this.

Shaheen plaits her daughter's hair and the Doctor watches her comb her fingers through the strands, gleaming in the firelight, until Umbrine says, “do you want me to teach you?”

“Definitely!” and she turns eagerly to Yaz and asks, “can I do yours?”

Yaz sits patiently while they practice and only says “ouch” twice and after half an hour the Doctor’s elaborate style draws even Shaheen’s compliments, and she glows with pride because she still has an ego the size of the sun and because her hands have made Yaz smile at herself in the mirror, and for once she’s made something beautiful that people understand.

People tell her all sorts of things now. Ryan volunteers things about his dad and Graham talks her ear off about Grace and all the things she used to love. Men had never been her brothers; they had always felt more like her flock. She is used to encountering women one by one, as sparring partners, opponents, lovers, travel companions, distressed damsels. It was usually a worrying sign when they appeared in packs. Now they seem to be everywhere and they look at her like they expect her to pitch in and get on with things. They compliment her earrings before telling her all about the disastrous time they tried to get a cartilage piercing. At least one of the older ones has described to her in detail what happened when she had her babies, as if it isn’t all so much squishy alien biology to her. Then they ask if she’s married and whether she has children, which nobody ever used to ask. At first it makes her guarded and sad and lost in memories, but it keeps happening, so often that she has to come up with a quick, vague small-talk sort of answer to complete the social exchange. And then some of them look at her with a kind of recognition. She's used to being recognised as someone to look up in the history books, but this is unsettling.

“Your _father_ ,” Nadja sighs at Yaz once, and Yaz rolls her eyes and nods, and the Doctor sits at the kitchen table and looks from one face to another, full of curiosity. Your father what? It feels like trying to read in a language you haven't practiced for a long time - or it would, if she knew how that felt.

She has spent so long as a being of bombast and war, living on an apocalyptic scale. She’s held onto her loneliness like armour, protective and commanding respect; even when she was desperate for friendship, she was always a god apart.

Sonya casually asks if she’s on Snapchat, snorts when she asks what Snapchat is, shows her an app with the most bewildering interface the Doctor has ever seen (which is saying a lot) and now sends her occasional short-lived photos of nothing in particular. She is delighted every time a picture of Yaz’s sister’s brunch arrives, and sends back selfies with the backgrounds obscured by dozens of emojis.

She’s drawn to Yaz the way she was always drawn to plucky young human girls, and sometimes Yaz looks at her just the way Rose and Amy and Martha did. But there are also times when Yaz, standing next to her, absent-mindedly adjusts a bra strap or something and the Doctor, just as absently, tucks her hair back and wonders what she missed out on with all the others.

Before Umbrine's wedding, Yaz fixes a flower in her own hair and then says, “right, come here, your turn,” and brushes the Doctor’s hair behind her ear to place an identical flower there like a gift.


End file.
